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Rick Green, We Gladly Accept Your Challenge!

Last week, we noted how odd it was that seemingly nobody was coming to David Barton’s defense after his shoddy scholarship was exposed by NPR and then Barton’s publisher announced that it had “lost confidence” in his work and was ceasing publication and distribution of his book.

Late on Friday night, WallBuilders finally issued a statement defending Barton’s work and announcing that his “book has already been picked up by a much larger national publisher and distributor” and would soon be in publication again. Given Barton’s, shall we say, lack of credibility at the moment, we remain a bit skeptical and so the veracity of this announcement remains to be seen.

Around the same time, Barton’s “WallBuilders Live” co-host and side-kick Rick Green took to his blog to pen a furious screed against Barton’s detractors that was replete with references to Hitler and attacks on the “elitists” who criticize Barton’s pseuo-history:

Hitler and Alinsky were both masters of this tool. Hitler said: “All propaganda has to … accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.”

These elitist professors and reporters attacking David Barton know that most people will not actually go read the supporting material behind David’s books…certainly not the bloggers and reporters who have so quickly jumped on the attack wagon. They are exactly the “least intelligent” Hitler was able to fool, Alinksy taught radicals to fool, and now even Christian “leaders” are joining.

…

These elitists do not enjoy seeing themselves replaced.

They believe they are the high priests of history and the law.

They do not want you to read the actual writings of the Founders because that negates the need for their position of being the keeper of the keys to history … The elitist professors like Kidd, Throckmorton, Coulter, & Jenkinson write boring books that very few people read and they give boring lectures that are only attended by students forced to do so in order to get a grade.

When these guys see Barton telling history in a way that is BOTH accurate and fun and they see millions of people are captivated and want to learn more, then perhaps it could be just a little jealousy could be causing them to lash out at Barton with innuendoes backed by no actual merit. But the bigger issue is that they do not want to lose the power of being the keepers of the keys to history. They want their “interpretation” of historical figures to control how generations view history, rather than letting historical events and historical figures speak for themselves.

Near the end of his rant, Green issued a challenge for anyone to show “a specific inaccuracy or false claim by Barton” and promised to post them on his blog for everyone to see:

In the meantime, I’m still waiting for someone to show me a specific inaccuracy or false claim by Barton … They are claiming that Barton is purposefully presenting a false picture of history and using inaccuracies and distortions to do so. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is these critics who are using inaccuracies, innuendo, and distortions to attack Barton in the first place.

If you can show me specifics that back up the image created by the critics innuendo, I’ll post it right here for the world to see.

Well, Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter wrote an entire book documenting Barton’s false claims, so he could start there. Or he could turn to Chris Rodda who tried to take up Green’s challenge only to discover that Green refused to post her comments on his blog and instead wrote a follow-up post asserting that he was not about to allow his blog to be used by “critics who have proven themselves to be illogical and slanderous” to promote their “ridiculous, unrelated, illogical ramblings.”

We unsuccessfully attempted to take up Green’s challenge as well, but he is blocking our comments and refusing to allow them to appear on his blog … so we will just do so here.

Last week, we posted a collection of ten absurd claims that Barton has made along with ten demonstrably false claims that Barton has made and we hereby issue our own challenge to Green to defend them. He doesn’t even have to defend all of them; he merely has to show us just one place where the Constitution directlyquotes the Bible “verbatim”:

From white supremacists to the radical Religious Right, right-wing extremism is on the rise. Pledge to stand against hate.

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